Books

October 30, 2011

How is it possible to wax poetic enough about this amazing novel? Vanessa Diffenbaugh tells the story of Victoria, a young woman abandoned at birth who finds her way to humanity via the beauty of flowers. This story captures in a singularly believable way the heartbreak of a child disconnected from all caring love and support. It captures the onlookers disbelief, our resistance to taking in let alone understanding such deprivation in another, what it takes for us to even begin to fathom the experience of such a child and counteract. It captures pure heartbreak and the triumph of the human spirit.

January 17, 2011

My technology discovery of the moment came with this morning's Sunday NYT. Vooks! Just last night I was commenting how funny it was that we still refer to movies or television released for the small screen as having come out on "video." Yes, video was a big deal when it first arrived! And now we have vooks. A cross between books and videos, both seemingly dying species. Who knew? I quickly learned that on vook I could access Deepak Chopra on Buddha, 15 minute pilates workouts and yes, yoga in bed. While still in my bed this morning I had downloaded the yoga vook and started my day in union with the universe before even rising. Luscious, time sensitive and fun! If you are as late to this as am I, don't despair, for lateness takes away not a thing from exploring the vook. Click here and enjoy!

July 29, 2010

For the first time I'm traveling without any books. Usually I would carry at least five and buy a few others along the way on my summer travels. This time on my iPhone I have David Mitchell's Ghostwritten to read screen by screen and for when I'm in a listening mood Allegra Goodman's audible The Cookbook Collector. And I'm carrying no books! Long have I resisted this turn of events. I love creamy paper, beautiful typeset, sturdy hardbacks, books I want to keep for their craftsmanship as much as their content. No doubt this love of old fashioned books will continue in some measure, but I've turned the corner and am loving the lightness and portability of audible and digital books. The notion that they are available with a quick download anytime, anywhere I am totally digging! Technology at its best. Don't even get me started about the zoom ap I just downloaded for my iPhone camera. Although I have to admit when I saw Alice Water's new cookbook in a bookstore I made a mental note to buy it hardback as soon as I'm home. Digital, yes. Rational, never!

January 18, 2010

Ruth McBride Jordan said it best. God is the color of water. This woman who died on January 9 at the age of 88 was her son James McBride's inspiration for the magnificent book, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. When it was first published I gulped it down. To be reminded of it today in an obituary was poetic. The transparency of color. Happy Martin Luther King Day!

June 16, 2009

Yesterday I lunched with the author Alice Hoffman at one of Diesel Bookstore's lovely events at the Amici Restaurant in Brentwood. About 30 of us gathered to listen to Ms. Hoffman read from her new novel The Story Sisters and then take questions from the audience. Best of all was when she sat at our table of five and chatted very personally about her creative process. She shared that one of her biggest regrets is that she hid her work from her children when they were young, so they grew up under the impression that Alice didn't work. Under those conditions she wrote and published 29 novels! She rose to write in the early subliminal hours of the morning before the children were awake and only returned to her labors once they were fast asleep at night. She spoke poetically about how we each have a unique individual voice that is as singular as our finger print. I love these opportunities to see and hear published writers up close. It is such an inspiration to put my own pen to paper. (Photo courtesy of Denise Malone Photography).

June 02, 2009

Author Lisa See requires 1000 words a day from herself before she does anything else. What a concept! Creative process first, above all else. My process if far more erratic. Yesterday listening to Lisa See talk about her creative process and her latest book Shanghai Girls, it just took me back to writer Ann Patchett's wisdom on all this. Don't leave the house before writing. Emerge only for a late lunch after writing. I have these things backwards. Let me get everything else done first, clear the decks, I tell myself, and then I'll write. So often life intervenes. Lisa See did some marvelous storytelling at this book tour lunch sponsored by my local independent bookstore Diesel. She spoke of her own rich Chinese ancestry and how it has become the backdrop for what truly moves her, writing about relationships and emotions. Her latest book is about sisters. Lisa actually grew up in China City, one of four original chinatowns in Los Angeles. Her message quickly moved from whimsical to serious with stories of the exclusion campaigns experienced by Chinese immigrants to this country at Angel's Flight in San Francisco and even more with the decade long shameful amnesty entrapment law enacted in 1957. From fanciful storytelling to profoundly relevant. Will we ever learn? From our own history?

May 20, 2009

Cookbooks? Poetry? Plays? One of my fondest memories is of a dinner party at friends Roberta & Bruce, where Bruce orchestrated a reading by the attending guests of a Neil Simon play. It was a riot and they practically had to forcibly eject us from the house, we were having so much fun to the bitter end. Their inspiration had been Roberta's reading/singing experience with South Pacific. Remember how in Jane Austen novels people gather to read? How about it? You could even try reading aloud in a new language. Lola and I read aloud Pablo Neruda's Odes to Common Things from the Bulfinch Press lovely bilingual edition. How about the cookbook I've just listed on artisanal puertorrican cooking? Or La Traviata for lovers of italian? What would you like to read aloud? What would you like to have read to you?

May 17, 2009

The pleasures of reading aloud are many. My partner and I just read Alexander McCall Smith's latest Precious Ramotse detective story Teatime for the Traditionally Built while on our trip through the Caribbean. We've read the entire series this way. Nothing beats being read to sleep. We choose sweet things to read to each other that help us wind down and nurture the soul. Recently our travel companions Katherine and Eunice upped the ante and took to reading aloud poolside, The Reader in their case. That certainly broadened our range of possibilities. We had been considering The Last Lecture for our next read aloud and possibly some James Thurber. Now I'm not so sure. Clearly there are other directions in which we could go. For more on this check out this Saturday's NYT article Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud by Verlyn Klinkenborg. Apparently Jane Austen could tell a lot about a person from how they read aloud. And from how people listened. The article lobbies for the lost art of reading aloud despite all the mod com gizmos for readers these days, from audible books to Kindle, and recommends Robert Pinsky's new book, "Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud." That's where I 'm going next.

April 14, 2009

Run, don't walk, to pick up this novel. A visually arresting string of prose, Marianne Wiggins' book reads all at once like a poem, a painting and a photograph. Way beyond a book. Once started I simply couldn't put it down, canceling all social plans until I was done. That was the first read. Then began my second read, searching for the elusive sensation of the first while also looking for what I might have missed. It is so full that it made me want to breathe deeply, to drink it in. The author has reflected her story of photographer Edward Curtis against a background story purportedly about herself. In questioning if it is really her own we embody the author's point about the eye of the beholder. Paintings and photographs give a visual subtext to the prose and poke at our perceptions. All is not how it seems, face value tells little if anything of the truth. Wiggins captures the panorama of the great American West, its Native American peoples beset by settlers from all four corners of the earth. From Hollywood to Teddy Roosevelt to Las Vegas showgirls. A great expanse filled with the story of a man who spanned the turn of the century as he told its very story. Wiggins paints an expansive landscape that holds Curtis' story within her own. At the end I felt like I had been held in the cup of her hand all the while thinking I was in a dusty desert basin, as if the bracelet had slid onto my wrist instead of hers, asking myself, where am I in this story, in my own story? A must read. I've already put on hold at the library every other book she has ever written.

August 17, 2008

Our Food for Thought book group gathered last Friday under Marie's fig tree for an outdoor repast and a discussion of Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. In attendance were Marcia, Denise, Barbara, Lola, Jean, our hostess Marie and yours truly. What a glorious summer evening! It was a veritable feast of crab cakes, fresh figs and goat cheese, green tomato salad, baked potates and oven roasted salmon, topped off by Marie's exquisite homemade lemon verbena ice cream. All served with a splash of Prosecco for good measure.

As for the book, I become more and more enthralled with it as time passes. The Yiddish Policemen's Union has stayed with me in the same way that Tony Kushner's Angels in America stayed with me. I simply marvel at such imagination from a fellow human being! Chabon transports us with his crime noir into a world where Jews settled Alaska and Israel doesn't exist. Having trouble following? Initially it was quite a stretch. Then I was quite taken. And now I can't stop thinking about it! It was quite a ride and I highly recommend it. Next month? Dinner at Barbara's and Middlemarch!